Racial integration

In one sense it refers to the "levelling of all barriers to association other than those based on ability, taste, and personal preference";[1] in other words, providing equal opportunity.

Here, according to Handlin, the emphasis is on racial balance in areas of occupation, education, residency, and the like.From the beginning the military establishment rightly understood that the breakup of the all-black unit would in a closed society necessarily mean more than mere desegregation.

[1]Similarly, Keith M. Woods writes on the need for precision in journalistic language: "Integration happens when a monolith is changed, like when a black family moves into an all-white neighborhood.

"[2] In 1997, Henry Organ, who identified himself as "a participant in the Civil Rights Movement on the (San Francisco) Peninsula in the '60s ... and ... an African American," wrote that the "term 'desegregation' is normally reserved to the legal/legislative domain, and it was the legalization of discrimination in public institutions based on race that many fought against in the 1960s.

Writes [Harvard University sociologist Orlando] Patterson, "The greatest problem now facing African-Americans is their isolation from the tacit norms of the dominant culture, and this is true of all classes.